“Sensitive data services” is a broad-brush landscape covering trusted research environments, secure data environments and other online services designed to enable safe, approved research with health, administrative and other types of sensitive data. “Federation” assumes a model of this landscape where sources of data and secure analytical services are distributed across the country and need to be connected across the Internet to support research on linked data at scale.
DARE UK have proposed a low-level infrastructure to support this federated picture but there is a much broader landscape of data, governance and application services to be layered on top to deliver the national research environment we all seek. This group brings together people interested in specifying this broad service landscape and developing the long-term technical architecture for sensitive data research within the UK.
User scenario(s) or use case(s) the IG wishes to address: The IG’s starting point is the DARE UK “Federated Architecture Blueprint” which captures the overall drive towards a federation of services for research with sensitive data. This group’s focus is very much the “federated” aspect of the landscape and how best to connect services and data sources in trustworthy ways.
Possible focus areas include:
- Evolution of the federated architecture blueprint to v3.
- Specifications for:
- Services for federated querying of distributed data;
- Services for data discovery, exploration and harmonisation;
- Services for data linkage;
- Common federation information model;
- Federation governance models;
- International connections (eg, with RDA, EU Data Spaces initiatives).
The IG sees itself as the owner and long-term maintainer of the technical architectural vision for the ecosystem of sensitive data research services in the UK, and as a coordination group for discussions around the focus areas above and a spawning ground for Working Groups on particular topics within those areas.
"We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code."
The group welcomes participants from service builders, research users, information governance professionals and data custodians from across the landscape.
- Group output will be managed and maintained at https://github.com/DAREUK/tre-federation
- [Describe how often the group will meet and sustain progress between meetings]
| FIRST NAME | LAST NAME | (Co-)Chair / Member | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rob | Baxter | @rmbaxter67 | Co-chair |
| Pete | Barnsley | Co-chair | |
| Simon | Thompson | Co-chair | |
| Phil | Quinlan | Co-chair |